I got IPv6 working with my home router, DD-WRT, and Comcast’s 6to4 service.
6to4 works by setting up a tunnel for IPv6 over IPv4. It uses the anycast address 192.88.99.1 as the tunnel endpoint. The IPv6 address is constructed from the host’s IPv4 address with 2002: prefix. 6to4 only works for hosts with public IP address which is why it has to be run on the router. Comcast has 6to4 proxies. Comcast was testing 6RD which is similar but the prefix and proxy address are configured.

I got a Palm Pre yesterday and really like it so far. Compared to my Treo, it is small and lovely. It looks like a black stone with smooth rounded shape that fits naturally in the hand. The webOS UI is much prettier than PalmOS. The touch interface is well done. Running multiple apps and switching between them with gestures is brilliant. The slider works well and the keyboard is cramped but usable.

One reason I got the Pre was the Classic app which runs PalmOS apps in an emulator. I can use my old apps until webOS equivalents are released. I can even browse the old PIM state from my Treo. Unfortunately, the app catalog is quite limited since the webOS SDK has not been released. It sounds like there is enough interest that once it is released that plenty of developers will release apps.

There are a few hardware annoyances. The microUSB port on the side is covered by an annoying, useless, fragile door. The top already rotates slightly side-to-side. The button on the front really should be a trackball.

On Saturday, I got one of the new 13″ MacBook Pro. I switched the 320 GB hard drive from my old MacBook with the 120 GB drive it came with. It took a trip to Fry’s and some frustration since the guts are not as accessible on the old MacBook. Everything worked great once it was finished and OS X reinstalled with new drivers.

Then yesterday, Apple released a firmware update that added SATA 3 Gbps support from the crippled SATA 1.5 Gbps it shipped with. After updating, my new Mac has been randomly freezing when reading from the hard drive. My guess is the problem is an incompatibility with the SATA 3 Gbps between the drive and controller. Some stories mentioned that the SATA 3 Gbps support was originally disabled because of intermittent data errors.

I posted in the Apple forums and it sounds like quite a few people who have upgraded the hard drive are having this problem. Unfortunately, there is no way to revert the firmware update. It might be possible to use the WD Data Lifeguard tools to disable SATA 3 Gbps support on the drive. Unfortunately, the tools only work on Windows or DOS CD or floppy. The other option is to switch back to the original drive.

I got a Roomba robotic vacuum recently. Somebody at work mentioned it and I realized that it would be the perfect solution for my tendency to not vacuum my apartment. Costco has a good deal on their Roomba 550 model which has 2 virtual walls, base station, and latest 5-series vacuum.

After two weeks of using it, I really like it. It does require picking up clutter and staging the room. It will eat cables or small items if they aren’t removed. There are a couple of spots like under the futon where it gets stuck. It gets confused by my complicated living room so I divide it half and do each part separately. I have been doing a schedule of one room per day. It doesn’t get everywhere and everything each time but it does a good job of keeping things clean.

A week ago, I got two more hard drives for my home server. The plan is to make a RAID 5 array with 1.5 TB of total space. The problem is that the Jetway J7F4 board I have only has two SATA ports. Luckily, I had a 2-port SATA PCI card and got the PCI riser card for my case. Putting a PCI card in the Chenbro case requires taking off the bracket and delicate routing of the cables around the card. Unfortunately, when I put the card in, the system wouldn’t turn on. Then, when I removed the card, the system also wouldn’t turn on. I assumed that I had touched the motherboard and damaged it.

I bought a new motherboard, the Intel D945GCLF2 board. It has the dual-core Atom 330 processor and Gigabit Ethernet but is still as cheap as original Little Falls Atom board. I got it installed in the case and it booted. The Realtek RTL8111/8168B Ethernet chip wouldn’t work with Linux. I had to get the new r8168 driver. It is still flaky and will only do 100Mb/s.

When I put in the SATA card, it wouldn’t start. Then I noticed that the PCI card was backwards. The card was keyed for both 5V and 3.3V slots and would fit backwards in the 5V slot. Which is easy to do when the bracket is removed from the card. I am pretty sure that this destroyed the old motherboard and probably the card since it did not work when put in the right way. I am going to have to get a new SATA card.

I was at Fry’s recently and saw a good deal on a 500 GB hard drive. I decided to get it to expand my home server from a single 500 GB drive to two drives in RAID 1. With Linux, it is possible to do the conversion without any downtime (but lots of time spent copying files). The secret is to create the RAID 1 volume in a degraded state with the new drive, copy the files to the RAID 1 voume, and then add the old drive to the volume. With LVM2, the extents can be moved with pvmove.

I recently got a digital SLR. I decided to pay more for the most recent consumer model over the earlier generation. Lots of places recommended the Nikon D40. But most sites recommended Canon system over Nikon in general. The XSi also had some features like live view, bigger LCD, and better kit lens that I liked.

I got some pictures with it on my recent trip that I wouldn’t have been able to get with my old camera. The quick response allowed taking some series of photos of moving subjects. I got some great photos with the telephoto. The image stabilization was very handy when zoomed all the way out. I got a couple of pictures with the prime lens in low light that probably wouldn’t have turned out otherwise. I took a few workable pictures inside the aquarium without a flash. The flash fill improved a couple of pictures of people taken in sunlight.

A few months ago, I got a new home server. I wanted to replace the old desktop with something quiet and low-power that could be left on all day. This led toward an mini-ITX motherboard. A fanless processor was better since I didn’t need the performance for video or anything heavy. I also wanted something upgradable to four SATA hard drives and with Gigabit Ethernet. All of it needed to cost less than $500 without drives.

The only case mini-ITX case with space for four hard drives I found was the Chenbro ES34069. It was a little expensive but turned out to be nicely designed and well made. The hard drives go in caddies which plug into a SATA backplane. It also has space for a 2.5″ hard drive, thin CD drive, and memory card reader. I decided to get a CompactFlash card in an IDE adapter for the system drive. I skipped the CD drive and reader.

For the motherboard, I wanted to balance having 4 SATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and fanless processor. The VIA EPIA SN10000EG would have worked well with 4 SATA ports and fanless processor but was too expensive. I chose to get the Jetway J7F4K1G2E which has a fanless VIA C7 processor, Gigabit Ethernet, and only 2 SATA ports. When I made the decision, the Intel Atom motherboard, the D945GCLF, had just been released. Unfortunately, it did not have Gigabit and the chipset uses more power than the processor. There are now more Atom motherboards with Gigabit and even 4 SATA ports that would work better.

The first problem with the install was forgetting the adapter cable from 40-pin IDE on motherboard to 44-pin notebook IDE connector on the drive. The second problem was the lack of mounting holes in the right place for the non-standard position of the 2.5″ drive. I was able to wedge it in place. The CompactFlash card was nice because I could put in the memory card reader on my desktop to write the root filesystem. When I do decide to go to 4 drives, I will need get a special riser card to use a PCI SATA adapter. That will be a tight fit in an already tight case. The case has a place for everything put it requires putting together in the correct order to get it all to fit.